AES E-Library

AES E-Library

Virtualized Listening Tests for Loudspeakers

When comparing loudspeakers and trying to eliminate the influence of their location, problems arise due to listeners’ short auditory memory. But if a virtual loudspeaker in a virtual room using headphones was equivalent to the real environment, comparison testing would avoid the problem of memory. Switching could be done instantaneously. Subjective tests showed that the quality of virtual loudspeakers depended highly on the test signal and upon the difficulty of creating accurate room- and head-related transfer functions at high frequencies. Nevertheless, virtualized loudspeakers can be imperceptible from reality in many cases.